


Friend Or Foe

by Suzie_Shooter



Category: Alex Rider (TV 2020), Alex Rider - Anthony Horowitz
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blizzards & Snowstorms, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Rescue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-22
Updated: 2020-06-22
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:41:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24860068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Suzie_Shooter/pseuds/Suzie_Shooter
Summary: When Alex comes round after the blast at Point Blanc, he finds himself locked up in the deserted facility. With the storm shutting down access to the mountain nobody is coming back anytime soon – apart from the man sent to ensure the place is wiped clean of incriminating evidence before the authorities return. The problem is, he may decide that includes Alex…(TV-verse, alternate version of events)
Relationships: Yassen Gregorovich & Alex Rider
Comments: 30
Kudos: 257





	Friend Or Foe

**Author's Note:**

> The ending assumes subsequent events play out as per the series, I just took a different route to get there because I needed more Alex and Yassen interaction.

Alex woke to a world of pain. His head was ringing and his face was sore – burnt, he guessed, touching it gingerly and wincing as his fingers encountered dried blood.

As recollection returned he struggled to sit up, looking round urgently to see if Stellenbosch too had survived the blast. The sight that met his eyes was confusing. Not only was there no sign of her, dead or alive, there was no sign of an explosion either.

Alex dragged himself woozily to his feet. His watch suggested he’d been unconscious for hours and he experienced a spike of alarm as he wondered what that meant for the rest of K-Unit. Despite having been given no particular reason to trust them, Wolf had seemed sincere enough in his promises to get Alex safely out again. 

But then, he’d obviously been moved Alex rationalised, so perhaps they’d just laid him here out of harm’s way to recover? Although why he’d have been dumped on a stained linoleum floor in a cold dark laboratory when there was an entire floor of bedrooms seemed a little puzzling. 

“Hello?” His voice seemed small and timid, and he frowned. “Hello?” Shouting it this time, but it just echoed back to him from the empty room. 

He staggered towards the door, just visible in the gloom and groped along the wall until he found a light switch.

To his relief it worked, but with illumination came deeper confusion. The laboratory space he was now in had clearly been disused for years, the equipment outdated by decades. 

“What the hell?” Alex tried the door, only to discover it was locked. He rattled the handle futilely. “What the _fuck_?” He peered through the vision panel, but all he could see was a short stretch of bare concrete corridor and then the edge of a stairwell.

He examined the door, but the position of the jamb it meant it opened inwards and he wouldn’t be able to burst it open. The lock wasn’t an easily pickable type, and the pane of glass was strengthened with georgian wire and too small to climb through in any case.

Abandoning the door as an option, Alex crossed to the window. He was clearly no longer in the basement which at least should mean he had a chance of – he stopped still, staring in disbelief.

Outside was nothing but a wall of whirling fog and snowflakes. No wonder it had seemed so dark, despite being barely eleven am. 

After a minute’s struggle that resulted in a freshly bleeding thumb, he managed to free the catch and force open the glass. A blast of icy air blew in, catching in his lungs and making him cough.

Alex grasped the frame and pushed his head through the opening, finding with relief it was wide enough for his shoulders to follow. He could climb out, and drop to the ground somehow. Even if he was on the first or second floor there would be handholds for him to use, and the snow would be deep enough by now to risk the jump. 

Half in and half out of the window he paused, willing the weather to clear even if just for a second or two so he could get his bearings. There was something about the icy void roaring past his face that made him reluctant to jump blindly, and after about a minute he had cause to be thankful for his hesitation.

A gap in the swirling cloud was enough for him to look down and make the appalling discovery that he was so high up he couldn’t even see the ground through the snowstorm below.

Frozen disbelief turned into panicked retreat, and Alex shuffled backwards into the room so fast he missed his footing and fell sprawling onto the floor.

Winded, he lay there half-stunned as snowflakes spiralled in through the open window and settled on his face. 

He was up in the building’s central core, he realised now. High up, almost at the top perhaps. He’d seen it on the approach in the helicopter, and again this morning skiing in through the dawn, remembered thinking how forbidding it looked. How many levels had there been, six, seven? Once inside he hadn’t given it another thought, concentrating instead on getting to the basement. 

Nobody had ever mentioned coming up here as far as he could remember, not even Greif or Stellenbosch when he’d been eavesdropping. The thick dust coating everything added to the theory nobody had been up here for years. But somebody knew about it. Somebody had brought him up here and locked him in. But who?

It didn’t make sense. Alex climbed painfully back to his feet and looked outside again, this time rather more circumspectly. Another fleeting break in the cloud and this time he caught a glimpse of one of the outbuildings, giving him a scale to fully appreciate exactly how high he was before the weather closed in again.

He closed the window with a bang and sank back to the floor, drawing his knees up to his chest and feeling sick. Thank God he hadn’t jumped. He’d come so close to doing their work for them.

That did pose another question though, and it was a curious enough one to stop him sliding into despair. Someone had gone to considerable trouble to bring him up here, and he was fairly sure there wasn’t a lift. Unconscious he’d have been a dead weight, and that was a lot of stairs. 

Stellenbosch could have managed it he thought, her strength had taken him by surprise and her kicks and punches had had the blunt force of being hit with a steel girder, but she’d taken the full force of the explosion and he was certain she had to be dead. 

Greif? Perhaps, but not without help. Wolf, though. Wolf certainly could have.

Alex hugged his knees miserably. Had he been betrayed? Worse, was this another test? 

A blank rage settled over him at that thought and he launched himself at the door, kicking, pounding, screaming. Hadn’t he proved himself? Hadn’t he done enough? What more did they want from him?

No matter how much noise he made nobody came, and eventually he slumped back to the floor, his throat hoarse and his fists sore. He’d known, deep down, that he was alone here, but it had been one last thread of hope to think he was still being watched, and the anger had kept him warm.

A tear tracked down his bruised and filthy cheek and he dashed it away with the heel of his hand.

This, he realised with a growing feeling of despair was what they had wanted, whoever they were. No satisfaction in shooting him dead while he lay unconscious, they’d wanted him to know the misery of being locked up alone, to know there was no escape and no rescue. He would starve to death, perhaps. Or he could end it now, throw himself out of the window. Maybe that would be best.

“Stop it.” Alex shook his head, saying the words out loud in the hope it might make him feel a little less alone. “You’ve been here five minutes, you can’t give up already.” He made himself get to his feet again, dragging himself up on the corner of the workbench. His whole body ached, he was cut, bruised and dirty, and all he wanted to do was curl into a ball and cry. But he wouldn’t give up. Not yet.

A search of the room and cupboards revealed nothing of use, and fiddling with the gas taps on the workbench suggested the supply had been cut off long ago, meaning blowing the door open was out. 

The lock was unpickable, the door unforceable. The ceiling was solid and the walls offered no conveniently sized ventilation ducts. The window offered only certain death.

Starvation it was then, Alex thought grimly. Or, no, dying of thirst would happen first. Or would it? 

He tried the tap more out of curiosity than anything and wasn’t especially surprised when nothing came out of it. The problem was, it made Alex suddenly realise how thirsty he was. 

Cursing under his breath and wishing he hadn’t just added to his torment by having the thought in the first place, Alex was about to automatically turn off the tap again when he stopped and listened. A distant knocking was the first sound from outside the room he’d heard since he woke up and he flew to the door, pressing his face to the glass in an attempt to see if someone was coming up the stairs. To his disappointment there was no-one in sight, but the knocking continued.

Alex’s state of mind was not helped by the realisation it seemed to be coming from inside the walls and he had an extremely horrid moment picturing a plague of rats homing in on the first fresh meat in years before common sense kicked in and he twigged it was probably just the water pipes.

This sink hadn’t been used in an age and the water had a long way to come, if indeed the plumbing was still connected at all. But the banging and juddering got louder and Alex watched in hopeful anticipation as finally the merest trickle of filthy brown water essayed from the tap.

“Ugh.” There was no way he was drinking that unless he wanted to add typhoid to the list of things he could die from up here. Nevertheless, he left the tap running as he continued his fruitless search of the room, in the hope it might eventually run cleaner.

By evening his mood, hardly optimistic to begin with, was at rock bottom. He’d failed to find any method of opening the door, his radio and camera had proved thoroughly burnt out, and nobody had come near the place.

The bag with his mountain survival rations hadn’t made it this far with him, and the fact the water had finally run clear enough to risk drinking just meant the gnawing hunger pangs became that much sharper. His full bladder was also becoming increasingly a problem. In the end he pissed in the sink. 

Outside the storm still raged. He knew from what the doctor had told him that up here the weather could close in for days at a time. He had to accept that nobody was coming. The only final fragile hope he could see was if the storm eased enough he could risk trying to climb out the window and down to another room where the door wasn’t locked. But to try it now would be suicide. It was a question of whether his strength lasted, with nothing to eat and corrosive despair eating away at him. It was the one question he couldn’t answer. Why had he been left behind? Was he considered expendable now? Or were they all dead? And which was worse?

–

The darkness outside was deepening into true night, and Alex had tried to make himself comfortable on the floor. He found he was drifting in and out of consciousness, his vision blurring disconcertingly. The confines of the room were making him feel claustrophobic and he’d opened the window again. The cold was a small price to pay for the fact the fresh air against his face eased the tightness in his chest. 

Somewhere into his dazed state filtered a new noise. It took him a while to register it, but when he did he sat up so fast his head swam sickeningly. Alex hauled himself up to the windowsill and listened.

Yes. Somewhere out there in the storm an engine was running. The sound came and went with the wind, but Alex was sure it was coming closer. It sounded like a snowmobile. Were they coming back for him? There only seemed to be one engine. Surely Mrs Jones would send a team like before? Which could mean it was someone connected to Greif rather than MI6. 

Somewhere far below the engine noise cut out, and Alex was faced with a choice. Who was down there, friend or foe? He decided at this point he didn’t care, he just needed to get out of this room. At least then he’d have options. Locked in here he had none.

Alex leaned out of the window. He couldn’t even see the ground, but the thought that somewhere below was another human being, that he was no longer alone on this godforsaken mountain was enough to give him strength.

“Hey!” he yelled. “Hey! Up here!”

No response came floating up to him, and he wondered if he’d even been heard. Apart from the howling wind, if whoever it was had just been insane enough to come at least twenty miles in the teeth of this storm, they’d presumably also be swathed in tight fitting skiwear and helmet, and probably not hearing much. He needed another way to signal his presence once they came into the building.

Remembering the way the plumbing had rattled and echoed so alarmingly gave him an idea. The copper pipes would run the length and breadth of the building and sound travelled well through metal.

He slithered back to the floor and wrenched open the cupboard beneath the sink. Pipes ran from the taps down through a hole into the base of the unit, and he reached in clutching a metal retort stand from the bench. He started banging out a rhythm, randomly at first and then had an idea, changing the beats to three fast, three slow, three fast. SOS. 

Alex banged for a long time with no tangible result other than a sore arm. The angle was awkward, and now the initial flush of adrenaline had worn off his head was going swimmy again. He ruefully remembered telling Mrs Jones so confidently that going back in with a mild concussion wouldn’t be a problem. But then he hadn’t bargained on getting blown up, had he. He hadn’t bargained on a lot of things. 

Alex crawled dismally back to his resting position against the cabinets, fighting hard the urge to cry. It wasn’t fair. Why had they left him like this? Was he so expendable? Mind wandering, Alex realised how little he knew about Blunt and co. What proof did he even have they really worked for the British government? Fancy ID’s could be faked after all. Alex had several himself, mostly for getting into unsuitable places with Tom.

Somebody was outside. 

At first Alex thought the shadow passing before the glass was just his imagination, but when he raised his head wearily to check he found with a shock there was a face looking in at him.

He shot to his feet so quickly it made him dizzy and he stumbled towards the door, only finally now realising it was a face he recognised. The man he’d seen before, the man who’d been visiting Greif, who, if he’d looked at Alex strangely then, was now staring at him like he had three heads.

“Please. Let me out!” Alex shouted. 

The only reaction this produced was for the man to lift a gun into his line of sight. The gesture he made was unmistakeable. Back up.

Alex did as he was told. By now he barely cared what happened to him, he just needed to get out of this room. 

There was a clicking and the door swung open. 

The man with the gun stepped warily inside, covering Alex the whole time and looking quickly around to check he was alone.

“Which one are you?”

“What?” Alex stared at him blankly.

“Which one are you?”

“Alex?” Alex said tentatively. He really didn’t understand the question which made giving the correct answer to the man holding a gun in his face trickier than it should have been.

“Alex what?”

He hesitated. He should say Friend, he’d withstood horrors to protect that identity, but he was coming very firmly to the end of his tether where that allegiance was concerned. They’d abandoned him, why should he continue giving them his loyalty? And besides, something was warning him to be honest where this man was concerned. 

“Rider.”

Whatever the man had been expecting, Alex didn’t think it was that. He actually lowered the gun a fraction, staring at him in undisguised fascination.

“What did you say?”

“Rider. My name’s Alex Rider. And I just want to go home, okay? I don’t care any more. About any of it.”

“What are you doing here?” The gun was lower still, but Alex wasn’t fooled into thinking the man had dropped his guard.

“I could ask you the same question,” Alex retorted. “Who are you?” 

The man studied him for a moment and seemed to come to a decision.

“My name is Yassen Gregorovich.” He watched Alex closely, then shook his head slightly. “That doesn’t mean anything to you, does it?”

“Should it?”

“I wondered. It might have. But – never mind. I asked you what you were doing here?”

“Not much, locked in here.”

“Are you always this insolent to people pointing guns at you?”

Alex shrugged. The room was suddenly very warm, or was it just him? Everything felt fuzzy.

“I don’t know,” he heard himself say, as if from a distance. “It hasn’t happened much. But I’m thinking probably yes?”

Darkness was closing in, and he thought the light had gone out until the floor rushed up to meet him and Alex realised it was him. The last thing he saw before passing out was Yassen darting forward to catch him before he hit his head.

–

When Alex came to at first it wasn’t an improvement. His whole body ached, his head most of all, and it was hard to breathe. The lighting was dim but he made out the flickering of flames somewhere in the background and briefly entertained the thought that he was in hell.

But as awareness returned more fully he realised he was lying on something soft and comfortable – was in bed, in fact – and the flickering came from an open fire that was making the room warm and cosy.

A shadow passed across the edge of his vision and Alex realised with a jolt he was not alone. With that, full recollection returned and he remembered everything, the tower room and the man – Yassen, was it? 

“You’re awake. Good.”

Alex could have sworn he hadn’t moved or given any indication, but the bed dipped as someone sat beside him and he turned to look.

Yassen had a bowl of water in his hand and reached out with a cloth towards Alex’s face. Alex sat up, fighting off a wave of dizziness and pushed his hand away defensively.

“I was only going to clean your wound,” Yassen said mildly, setting the bowl on a table beside them.

Alex looked at him woozily, then reached out for the bowl himself. Yassen gave him a look of exasperated amusement and fetched a small mirror from another table, handing it to Alex without a word so he could see what he was doing.

The sight of his own reflection made Alex falter. His face was half caked in blood.

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Yassen said softly. “The cut is shallow, and it’s already sealed itself. You might have a concussion though,” he added, thinking of how the boy had simply crumpled in front of him.

“I already had a concussion,” Alex sighed, starting to clean away the dried blood. 

Yassen pursed his lips. “Then it’s good you apparently have a hard head.”

When he was done Yassen handed him a towel, and Alex looked around properly for the first time. It was a well-appointed bedroom, far more opulent than any of the cell-like rooms the pupils had had. 

“Where are we?”

Yassen shrugged. “I assume this was Greif’s.”

“Eww.” Alex looked down at the bedclothes and made a face. Yassen gave a low laugh.

“If it helps I put clean sheets on for you.”

Alex looked up in surprise. “How very domestic,” he said before he could stop himself. Then something else occurred to him and he looked hastily under the covers, relieved to find he still had t-shirt and boxer shorts on. “I wish people would stop undressing me,” he sighed.

Yassen raised his eyebrows. “Does it happen a lot?”

“More than you’d think.” 

“You never did tell me what you were doing here?” Yassen said mildly.

“No. I didn’t.” Alex shifted uncomfortably. 

“How about I spare your blushes and make an educated guess? You’re working for Alan Blunt.”

“You know him?” Alex asked in surprise, then winced. But what was the point in dissembling now. Yassen already seemed to know everything. It might be a bluff but somehow Alex didn’t think so. And maybe this, finally, was his chance for some answers. 

“Trust me, I’ve worked for some bastards in my time. In his own way Blunt is worse than all of them. A little man with a sense of duty and a degree of power is a dangerous thing,” said Yassen. “He sees people as things to be used.”

“And what do you see them as?”

“Targets, mostly,” said Yassen neutrally.

Alex sensed he was somehow both joking and telling the truth and shivered despite the warmth of the room.

“Do you know who killed my uncle? Ian Rider?” he asked, suspecting the answer was right in front of him and unsure how dangerous it would be to accuse him of it. For whatever reasons of his own, right now this man was helping him and Alex knew that right now he didn’t had the strength to carry on fighting.

Yassen studied him for a while. “Yes. I do,” he said carefully.

“Who?”

“Does it matter?” Yassen looked away. “There was a contract on him. Does it matter who carried it out?”

Alex stared at him. Yassen was looking into the fire rather than at him and Alex studied his scarred profile, wondering. 

“Alright. Why was he killed then?”

Yassen glanced back at him. “He wouldn’t let it go,” he sighed. “He was warned. But he kept searching. In a way, I don’t blame him. But he thought he could stay one step ahead, and that was his downfall.”

“Searching for what though?”

Yassen shook his head slightly. “Ian was killed just for looking for the answer to that question. You think it would be healthy for me to tell you?” He got up again and crossed the room, poured himself a drink.

“What’s that?” Alex asked.

“Vodka.”

“Cliche much?”

Yassen eyed him with barely concealed amusement. “It was all I could find. I think it belonged to Stellenbosch.”

“Can I have some?”

Yassen looked surprised, but picked up a second glass and brought the bottle across to the bed. “How old are you?”

“Fourteen.” 

Yassen gave him a curious look. “You could only have been a baby,” he murmured.

“What?”

“Nothing.” Yassen poured him a generous measure, more than Alex would have dared serve himself.

“Trying to get me drunk?”

Yassen gave a brief smile. “Live dangerously.”

“To be honest I’d quite like to stop living dangerously for five minutes.”

“Which reminds me. You still haven’t told me what you’re doing here. Why would you work for Blunt, what’s he got on you?”

Alex gave an indignant laugh. “Is that how your mind works? You think people have to be blackmailed into doing things?”

“Why else would you be here? You didn’t look like you were enjoying it much.”

“I wanted to find out who killed my uncle.”

“But that had nothing to do with the school?” Yassen said automatically, then stopped himself. But Alex just shrugged. 

“They told me it did.” 

“Blunt.” They said the name at the same time, with roughly similar tones of disgust. 

Alex sipped his vodka. “Besides. I guess it worked, anyway,” he said quietly. “I mean, I found him. Didn’t I?” He risked a look up to find Yassen watching him. 

“Yes.” 

Alex nodded. They regarded each other silently, neither quite sure what to say. The anger that had been boiling in Alex for so long seemed to have slipped away somehow. Perhaps it was the realisation that the people supposed to protect him had used him like this, while the man he should hate was the one who’d saved him. It made his head ache.

“Why are you doing this?” Alex asked.

“My people wanted the place cleared out of anything sensitive before your people came back.”

Alex shook his head. “That’s not what I meant.” He gestured, taking in the bed, the fire, the vodka. “This. Why are you helping me?”

Yassen took a swallow of his own drink and shook his head slightly. “To be honest I’m not entirely sure,” he admitted. “You know too much. You’re a security risk. And from what I can gather you were the one responsible for taking down this whole operation.”

Alex watched him warily. Yassen didn’t sound particularly angry about any of those things. In fact Alex could have sworn he sounded almost impressed. 

“What are you going to do?”

Yassen didn’t answer for a long time. “I should kill you.” He sounded tired.

Alex swallowed down a spike of fear. “You’re not going to though. Are you?”

Yassen finally turned his head to look at him. “No.” He offered no explanations, but Alex found he believed him. 

He raised his glass in a tentative toast. After a second, lips barely curved in a reluctant smile, Yassen raised his own glass and clinked them gently together.

–

In the morning Alex couldn’t tell what was concussion and what was hangover, but despite his aching head he felt distinctly better. The sense of dislocated despair had gone, replaced by the growing need to go home and get his normal life back.

The night before Yassen had disappeared briefly, returning with a selection of food far better that anything the pupils had had access to. Finally feeling well-fed and warm inside and out from the fire and the vodka, Alex had slipped into a reluctant sleep.

He got the impression Yassen hadn’t slept at all, had spent the night hours scouring the place for anything incriminating. The smell of burning was stronger this morning too, and Alex didn’t ask.

Outside the storm showed no signs of abating, but Yassen had apparently done what he came for and was preparing to leave again, displaying no concern at being able to find his way in the blizzard. 

“You should stay here,” Yassen said, seeing Alex watching him with a question on his lips. “There’s plenty of food and your people will be back as soon as the storm clears.”

Alex gave him a troubled look. “I still don’t understand why they left me behind in the first place. Did they think I was dead? Even then it doesn’t make sense. How did I get into that room in the first place?” 

Yassen stopped what he was doing and looked slightly more interested. “You don’t know how you got in there?”

“No! I was in the basement. There was a fire – an explosion.” Alex’s hand went unconsciously to the wound on his face. “When I woke up I was locked in the tower where you found me, and everyone had gone.”

Yassen considered this, and gave a humourless laugh. “Maybe they’ve got the wrong one,” he suggested, going back to filling a bag with things Alex had a suspicion his own department would very much like to get their hands on. But Yassen’s offhand comment derailed his train of thought and Alex stared at him, suddenly remembering the Russian’s first words to him when he’d opened the door. 

_Which one are you?_

A horrible suspicion was building in Alex’s mind. “What do you mean?” he asked numbly.

Yassen glanced up. “You know what they were doing here, yes?”

“Yes.” Of course he did. He’d seen the evidence with his own eyes. He’d even seen the files – his files. How had he never made the final connection? “Oh my God.” 

Hardly knowing what he was doing Alex suddenly clutched at Yassen’s arm. “You have to take me with you. You have to get me home!”

Yassen regarded him in surprise. “And why would I do that?”

“Because there could be an imposter living my life right now!” It occurred to Alex with a frightening clarity there were two ways it could go. The clone could simply take up his life, assuming Alex to be safely dead. Or, worse and more likely, with the entire reason for the boy’s existence abruptly destroyed, he might be out for revenge. Every single person Alex cared about could be in terrible danger.

“You have to help me.” Even as he said it Alex knew there was no reason Yassen should do so. He’d been openly wondering at one point whether to get rid of him altogether, and Alex suspected he’d had a narrower reprieve than he realised. But there had to be some way to make him care.

“You said you were here to clean house right? Well isn’t this guy a risk too? He could tell them things about you.”

Yassen shrugged. “They already have Greif. He’s my main concern right now. The children know nothing that can hurt the people I work for.”

“They’ll have taken Greif to London though. So you’ll be going that way anyway, right?” Alex found the idea that Yassen was clearly intending to kill the man less troubling than he possibly should have. “And you owe me.” The words were out before he could stop them, but Yassen just gave him a steady look somewhere between resignation and amusement. It was an expression Alex was becoming familiar with.

“Fine,” Yassen sighed. “Get a coat.”

Bundled once more into one of the school’s yellow jackets, Alex followed Yassen out into the storm. You could only tell it was daytime by the fact the whirling snow was grey not black, and Alex realised he’d never have found his way across the mountain alone. Yassen though seemed calmly confident, checking over a snowmobile that looked far more expensive than the ones used by the guards, before climbing on board.

Hesitating only a moment, Alex climbed up behind him. It had occurred to him that Yassen could push him off somewhere out in the snowy wastes and he’d never be seen again, but he took odd comfort in the thought that if he was going to kill him he’d probably have done it by now.

“Hold on to me,” Yassen ordered, glancing back as he started the powerful motor. “If you fall off I’m not stopping.”

Alex glared at his back, then tentatively slipped his arms around Yassen’s waist. As they started off this changed to a death-grip, all awkwardness abruptly forgotten as the momentum almost threw him backwards.

They powered into a blinding maelstrom, and Alex’s world narrowed to the roar of the engine and the faint warmth of the man in front of him. The journey seemed to go on for hours, Yassen never faltering in his course. Alex assumed he had some kind of GPS system he was following, but the uneven ground and occasional dizzying drop to the side didn’t seem to faze him either.

Eventually, when Alex felt numb from the vibration and frozen to the extremities, they finally pulled up at a cabin. Staggering off gratefully Alex noted they still seemed to be in the middle of nowhere, but Yassen stowed the snowmobile and lead Alex round the building, where he discovered a big black four-by-four and the start of a metalled road. 

Sinking into the front seat with relief, Alex immediately turned the heater on. Yassen glanced at him but said nothing. By the time they reached a town Alex was half asleep. 

Civilisation, he thought drowsily, looking at the houses sliding silently by. He could jump out, run to the police. But what would he tell them? He had no proof of what had happened, no papers to say who he was. Like it or not, right now Yassen was his best chance of getting home as quickly as he needed to.

Unsure how this would be accomplished but trusting that the man appeared to know what he was doing, Alex was still somehow surprised when they turned into a small private airfield. 

Yassen got out and had a muted conversation with the man on the gate. Alex couldn’t make out what they said, but got the impression Yassen was known here, and also that whatever the man had called him it hadn’t been Gregorovich. Alex started to appreciate just how much Yassen was compromising himself by bringing Alex along with him, and wondered why he’d agreed to do it. Presumably he had his reasons. Alex was just grateful for now that he had. 

As Yassen got back in the car and drove towards a distant hangar, Alex watched him out the corner of his eye. Yassen had said precisely nothing to him since they’d left the school hours ago, but Alex got the impression that was just how he was. Alex, whose primary instinct was to talk non-stop particularly when stressed, had found it strangely restful. 

There was a small private plane in the hangar, and Alex realised re-entry to England was going to be rather simpler than he’d supposed.

“You fly?” he said in surprise, when it became apparent that Yassen was going to pilot the thing himself.

“You don’t?” Yassen countered, and Alex surprised himself by laughing. He settled into the co-pilot’s seat feeling conflicted. The knowledge that here, right here was the man who’d killed his uncle was lying like a stone in his stomach. He’d been so obsessed with finding out who’d done it that he hadn’t stopped to think about what he would do then. And Yassen had been right, in a way. If it hadn’t been him, it would have been someone else. Alex needed to know who’d given the order, not who’d carried out the instruction.

Aware he was trying to rationalise away the growing suspicion that he somehow quite liked the man, Alex stared out of the window as the French landscape fell away beneath them. To the east he got a glimpse of mountains still shrouded in storm-clouds and shuddered. If it hadn’t been for the man at his side he would still be up there, locked in that room. Or would he be lying broken on the mountain, having chanced the window? He shuddered again, hard enough to make Yassen glance at him.

Yassen said nothing, but felt around under his own seat and passed Alex something which he saw with surprise was a bar of chocolate. 

“Assassins eat chocolate?”

Yassen’s lips twitched. “Probably not the first advertising campaign they chose to go with.”

Alex hid a smile. He still wasn’t sure how he felt about Yassen, but he accepted the chocolate gratefully and the sugar did make him feel better. 

–

Less than two hours later they touched down at London City airport. Alex’s anxiety levels were rising again, but once more they passed through with no tangible problems and he wondered what the hell kind of clearance whatever alias Yassen was using had. The abstract knowledge that people that dangerous could apparently come and go in the country as they pleased was an unsettling one. But for now he had more pressing worries.

Alex had wondered what would happen next, whether Yassen would insist on coming with him or would perhaps make it difficult for him to leave. He’d been prepared to have to give him the slip, but in the event once they were safely outside the airport Yassen just looked at him with a slight shrug.

“Well I guess we both have places to be.”

Alex gave a stiff nod. He strongly suspected Yassen’s next stop involved neutralising Greif, and wondered if he should warn Blunt and Jones. But part of him vindictively thought Greif had it coming, and another part wondered if they would even listen to him.

As if reading his thoughts, Yassen gave him a serious look. “Be careful,” he advised quietly. “If they think he’s you, they are just as likely to think you are him.”

Alex realised then with a slight shock that going through official channels for help hadn’t even occurred to him. He would assess the situation, and take steps accordingly. Alone. 

The thought passed through his mind that he perhaps had more in common with the man standing in front of him than he would like, and it was an uncomfortable realisation. 

Abruptly he turned away and started walking, then just as abruptly checked himself and turned around. Yassen hadn’t moved, was still standing there watching him quietly, as if interested to see what Alex would do next. 

“Thank you.” Alex wasn’t sure what made him say it. He had every reason to despise the man, but at the same time he recognised Yassen had had no real reason to help him, and yet he had. And Alex had been raised to be polite.

Yassen smiled, as if Alex had once more surprised him. 

“I would say any time, but perhaps better if we do not meet again.”

“This isn’t over.”

“I say it is.” There was no anger in Yassen’s voice, just a flat statement of fact. “Go home Alex.”

As intended this reminded Alex that he was wasting time, that even now his double could be causing all kind of havoc in his life. He contented himself with giving Yassen one last long frustrated stare, then turned and ran.

He had no money on him, he realised, no oystercard, no phone. On foot it would take him far too long to get home.

“Shit,” Alex panted as he ran. “Shit shit shit.”

He passed a line of cycle racks and stopped, looking speculative. He’d picked more complicated locks in the last few days. 

A few minutes later he was peddling hard towards Chelsea.

–


End file.
